Date: 12-May-2025 - 13-May-2025
Location: Nantes, France
Meeting URL: https://anamariafalaus.org/workshop/

We are pleased to announce a workshop on the morphosyntax-semantics mapping of bare nominals across languages, organized around the volume "The Open Handbook of (In)definiteness: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Interpreting Bare Arguments”, edited by Veneeta Dayal and forthcoming with MIT Press.

Speakers:
Veneeta Dayal (Yale University)
Rajesh Bhatt (UMass Amherst)
Ivano Caponigro (University of California San Diego)
Gennaro Chierchia (Harvard University)
Anamaria Falaus (CNRS-Nantes)
Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)
Manfred Krifka (Leibniz-ZAS)
Luisa Martí (Queen Mary University of London)
Trang Phan (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Agata Renans (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Yağmur Sağ (Rutgers University)

The "Hitchhiker’s Guide" tackles a central question about languages without articles: are bare nouns in such languages ambiguous between definite and indefinite? This question is explored through the lens of a questionnaire that aims to identify different aspects of (in)definiteness in a theory-informed but theory-neutral way, providing a pointwise comparison of bare arguments in seven unrelated languages. The empirical generalizations that emerge are then analyzed within the neo-Carlsonian approach to noun phrase semantics.

The workshop will have Veneeta Dayal present her project and volume. In addition, 10 other invited scholars will engage with various aspects of the project and volume, from the case studies to the questionnaire, as well as the theoretical and empirical insights. The workshop as a whole will showcase the significance of cross-linguistic semantics in furthering our understanding of natural language grammar.

Program and practical information can be found on the workshop website: https://anamariafalaus.org/workshop/

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics
Syntax
Typology